40% of College Students get this question wrong. AND IT MAKES ME ANGRY!

[Divine Miss Bee]

lol i just learned this in 8th grade

got a point there-let's find a real college math question. here's one from my math book (i don't know how to type math symbols, so give me a bit of leeway).

Let f(x)=cube root of [x-squared + 4x] and let g(x) be an antiderivative of f(x). Then, if g(5)=7, find g(1).


so there you go-college math from a "fake" music major (i took AP calculus AB in tenth grade for giggles-why judge me for loving opera?).

Spoiler

note: this solution isn't in the back of my book, so my answer could be wrong. but i don't think it is. i got -3.88222. took me a while, because this problem randomly decided to screw with ALL of the rules i know for integrals. but there you go...

 

[brunothepig]

i have to respond to this with a question. Who cares? its the same argument i gave to my teachers back in high school, it never comes into practical everyday use, so it's useless outside of studies.

It depends on your profession. Hell, if you do some areas of engineering you'll get into imaginary numbers. They're good fun.
Yes, I'm being serious. I'm one of those kids who genuinely enjoys maths, and the mind-buggering problems it can produce.
And how the hell can Uni students get that wrong? Still, I suppose if they aren't the mathematics ones it's justified.

 

[Lucifron]

Well, this doesn't say anything good about the American education system. It's quite odd really, but I know of a person who was an exchange student in the States, and she was treated like some kind of prodigy in High School as she was the only one able to answer some basic world history questions correctly. Educationyourdoingitwrong?

 

[teisjm]

I learned this in gymnasium (liek high school i think) when i was 16... It was one of teh first thing we learned in math.

Spoiler

(A+B)^2 = A^2 + B^2 + 2AB
And what my experienec says, many people have a hard time understandign, that A and B can be anything, it can be pre-set numbers, like 3 or variables like X, it it can be bigger numbers, or even equations themselves.

Isn't college university level education?

 

[razer17]

Two problems here:

1) You are entering a structured learning environment to learn how to develop a completely subjective talent. No one can teach you how to be creative. They can teach you techniques that worked for famous/skilled artists to guide your art, but they will never be able to teach you how to be artistic. That is 100% entirely with you and whether or not you have the ability. It cannot be taught. This I can certainly agree with.

2) Artists don't actually contribute towards society in any objective, real way. They're entertainers, and while I am all for the existence and continuation of such professions, I always have, and always will, regard such professions as... "less", for lack of a better word. I don't expect many to agree, especially since as I said, the contribution of entertainers to society is entirely subjective, but that's my $0.02. This one though, i'm not so sure about. I would give up the ability to do even basic math in an instance, depending on what type of artists you are on about. Entertainment is more important than maths to people's lives. Especially these days when every basic phone model has an in built calculator anyway. Note that I am inclding all the arts: Film, art, music Not to mention the importance of art in that, basically everything is "art" depending on how you define it.

.

 

[samsonguy920]

Ask a rocket scientist what 32-21 is and they will pull out a calculator. Ask him what x is in x(4sin)^69+x^cos2.4/y(5x+3)^5y and he will have it easy(probably having fun doing it, too)(And no I'm not telling you the answer ). We are not robots, we train our minds towards the skillset we go towards through school and career.
But thank you for the refresher. FOIL was collecting some dust in my basement.

 

[razer17]

I probably should've just gone with the parenthetical first and foremost. The value of art is subjective (plus the actual educational value of studying art in a structured learning environment is questionable at best) Is it? I mean really? Because, I can tell you now, that the people I know who do art and subjects of that type (Media, photography etc) learn not only techniques on drawing and that sort of thing, but god damn some of their writing is good. I did A level English, so I'm not bad with writing, but there is no way I could do what they do with no prior knowledge. Thus I call the study of art a fake major.

I don't mean that art, music, entertainment, etc is useless (and I really should be more careful with my choice of words), but that they're value is entirely subjective. The value isn't subjective. Entertainment arts (and I don't just mean art here) are more important than maths, to the populous in general terms. Like I mentioned earlier, today, with our fancy calculators, most people don't technically need maths. Everyone needs entertainment, in a psychological manner of speaking.

I will say, though, that any and all politicians are, as a group, basically useless though. If only because the US government has very successfully jaded my views on such things in recent years.Because obviously an anarchy would work so well. Politicans sure are useless for making sure that we have laws that better society.

 

[Platinum117]

May i please remind you that people who don't like/need to do maths dont give any sort of a shit? When am i ever going to use expanding, factorizing and all the rest of that useless bullshit in new media development? Exactly, so stop being annoying and go do your maths somewhere where none of us have to watch you.

 

[Tiny116]

I'm a radiography student i left algebra ffar far behind *shudder*

 

[Bagaloo]

Why would I ever need to do that? I learned it for my high school exams, and promptly forgot it again after, because I'm studying history at university, which, as you might guess, has absolutely no mathematics involved at all.

It would be an utter waste of my time to keep brushing up on my maths skills because I never, EVER have to use them any more, beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Turns out, what has happened is exactly what we kept complaining to our maths teacher about; "when will we ever need to use this in the real world?".

 

[RavingLibDem]

Ok, I'm a college student in history, why would I know the answer to this? It's not that obvious, and you can have a block on maths and still be clever!

 

[Agayek]

I will say, though, that any and all politicians are, as a group, basically useless though. If only because the US government has very successfully jaded my views on such things in recent years. Because obviously an anarchy would work so well. Politicans sure are useless for making sure that we have laws that better society.

You made fairly solid points and I'm too tired to argue about the rest of it right now so I'm just gonna say this:

Since I am a fairly hardcore libertarian, I'd have to say yes, Politicians sure are useless. Government exists to protect the natural human rights of each individual, and no more. These rights are very basic, and as such do not require politicians debating for months about them. Therefore, the entire legislative process is flawed and asinine and everyone who takes part in it is an idiot.

There are three basic rights: Life, Liberty and Property. The government exists solely to ensure any of your rights to these three is not infringed on by an outside party. Everything else falls outside their purview.

 

[Kathinka]

and that's why us college degrees have no meaning in the rest of the world. at best maybe as something of an improved highschool-degree^^ (that's the way it works here for example)

 

[FlayD]

I am a graphic design major, and I understand this question perfectly well. What's more, I took the second highest level of mathematics during my final year alongside humanities.

Let me relate a story one of my lecturers told me (my memory's imperfect, but this is as close as I can recall): Until a few years ago, this lecturer was the head of a prestigious European graphic design school. One year, they conducted a study of students who had left their school a few years before with devastating findings - less than 20% of those students were actually employed. Of course, the heads of the school begin to freak out; if this news got out it would of course do some serious damage to the school's reputation. So they re-examined the data to find out what the problem was.

As it happened, they had made a mistake in reading their findings. The data actually showed that 20% of the students were employed AS DESIGNERS. Upon graduating, a large portion of students had found employment in a whole range of fields, some completely unrelated to design. One notable example was a guy who was helping to run a local hospital. This wasn't because the graduates had no use for the skills they had developed; quite the contrary, it was because creativity was so highly valued in such a wide variety of fields.

Art itself is not 'necessary' to society, but it does play a role in that it fosters creativity, which is indispensable to almost every profession. (Oh, and I know design isn't exactly the same as art, but they're in the same family.)

Oh, and the answer:


(x + 3)^2
(x + 3)(x + 3)
x^2 + 3x + 3x + 9
x^2 + 6x + 9

 

[Mandal0re]

maybe 40% of college students study(and are knowledgable)in areas of academia which have absolutely nothing to do with maths? Your an elitist douche if it annoys you that some non mathmaticians cant do a mathmatical equation.

 

[Caliostro]

I'm assuming those who got it wrong are mostly art students where as this is a math question.

Hey, I took art, then went to college for two years in architecture, then switched and going 3 years in psychology. In no way has my education focused on maths... And I got it right.

...Ok, to be entirely fair, for some masochistic tendency I actually took "full" maths till the 12th grade... Why? Beats me. I hated the bloody thing... But I did...

@OP: It gets scarier... Check out how many English speaking high school and college students can't tell you the difference between "your" and "you're"; or "their", "there" and "they're"; or "it's" and "its"... etc. Yes, most people can't tell a contraction from a possessive...

 

[Hawgh]

Why would I ever need to do that? I learned it for my high school exams, and promptly forgot it again after, because I'm studying history at university, which, as you might guess, has absolutely no mathematics involved at all.

It would be an utter waste of my time to keep brushing up on my maths skills because I never, EVER have to use them any more, beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Turns out, what has happened is exactly what we kept complaining to our maths teacher about; "when will we ever need to use this in the real world?".

A school is primarily intended to teach you how to think and learn more effectively. Struggling to understand the building blocks of mathematics is a great exercise, because it's tough, and it's easy to evaluate improvement.
Whether or not you keep the knowledge in question is up to you. For me, abandoning something I know, sorta annoys me.
Also: all the people in your class who went on to educate themselves in something even remotely related to natural sciences probably disagree with your assessment that they never needed it in the real world.


That said:

Spoiler

(x²+3)² = (x+3)(x+3) = x*x+3*3+x*3+x*3 = x²+9+6x = 42

@Guy above me.
Hell, nowadays I encounter strapping young people who don't even bother with learning how to read. It's downright disturbing.

 

[reg42]

Dude... I got thought this stuff last year for high school. It's simple as hell. Actually no, I got thought it 2 years ago.

 

[Zhukov]

Uh huh.

You are aware that not everyone is a math major, right? You getting pissed off about people not being able to expand equations is like a history major getting pissed off about people who don't know about the governance of the Florentine Republic or whatnot.

As for me, I gleefully purged all that dreary algebra crap from my brain the minute I finished senior high. Made room for, y'know... actual interesting stuff.

So yeah, I'm part of that 40%.